5/ Five Senses

As an M.Ed student, my co-teacher Mandy and I had to come up with a series of exercises for the middle school intersession course on creative writing we taught, and this is one that was essentially her idea. We had to practice the teaching with a group of our peers, other pre-teachers, and I'm going to present it as such, though you can adapt it as you see fit:

- Write the five senses at the top of the board. Go through each one slowly, eliciting specifics from students--give them a place (with the pre-teachers, it was a bar; with my high schoolers, it was the cafeteria) and have them shout out responses. Make the list as long as you can with as many nouns, verbs, and adjectives as you can. Emphasize how you haven't been in X place in a long time and really want to imagine what it is like being in that place.
- Review the lists you've created on the board. What words are strongest? Why? Discuss.
- Create a writing assignment around this list--I usually had them write a poem evoking a sense of place using rich sensory details, but you can also have them create a narrative, etc.